Hi everyone! I've been looking about and didn't find an answer to a very basic question.

I recently took the dive into professional kitchen knives for my kitchen. I picked up two Wusthof knives here in Japan (a bit more expensive here!) and, while I am very pleased with them, I find that then tend to stick to the food when I use them, so I was wondering if knives fresh out of the box need to be touched up a bit.

So it's a simple one: should I take these to a knife shop and have them sharpened?

I am not clear on what the problem here is, especially when framed in the context of sharpening. If I use a knife to cut through for example cheddar cheese, the blade may tend to stick as I cut, but that stickiness would not be resolved by sharpening the blade. What am I missing?

chefjbs wrote:Just wondering why you would buy a wushtof in japan?? they make some of the best chef knives in the world. I'm sure you could find a nice western sytle knife that would blow your wushtof away.

First of all- The Japanese probably make the finest culinary knives in the world.However the Wusthof knives of Germany are very high quality knives.

I believe the subject of "sharpening" is not the issue here. Just as a bayonet has a "blood groove" some culinary knives have these little flutes or grooves in the blade.(sorry,don't know the correct terms for these indentations)They allow air in so that food such as meat and cheese do not stick to the blade.

My solution is certainly not scientific but works- I simply wet the blade

as said by just about everyone else, sharpening doesnt help with sticky-ness. i assume you mean like when you dice an onion, and make the lengthwise cuts and just use kind of an up and down motion, the little onion semi-slices come up and make things look weird. the simplest solution ive found to this (and its definately not the safest) is just to work faster. the less the blade stays still, the less opportunity something has to stick.

also, most knives come kinda dull. this can be deceiving with some japanese brands like Misono and Tojiro because they highly polish their edges, so their edges fade fast. so i would recommend getting them sharpened soon after buying them.